"You're right, Fuller, and I'm but a froward child," said Brewster, a sudden smile replacing the frown of pain upon his face, and obediently opening out his burned and bleeding palms. "Come to the Common house, so as not to fright my wife within there, and do them up with some of your wonderful balsam."
"And were it not for thought of your work, you would not have let me see them," said Fuller glancing from under his penthouse brows with a look of cynical admiration.
"One cannot give thought to every pin-prick with such deadly sickness on all sides," replied Brewster simply. "Best go into the hospital and see if thy poor dying folk have taken any harm of the fright before thou lookest after me."
"The Captain has gone into the sick-house. I'll hold on to you," returned the Doctor curtly, and Brewster yielded with his ever gracious smile.
That evening as the Elder with his bandaged hands, Carver, gaunt and pale from an attack of fever, Standish, Winslow, John Howland, and Doctor Fuller sat at supper in the Common house, Master Jones, followed by a sailor heavily laden, presented himself at the door.
"Good e'en, Masters, and how are your sick folk?" demanded he, in a would-be cordial voice.
"Thanks for your courtesy, Master Jones," replied the governor with grave politeness. "They are doing reasonably well, except some few who do not seem like to mend in this world."
"And Master Bradford? Sure he is not going to die?" pursued Jones in a voice of strange anxiety, as he sank into the great arm-chair Carver had proffered him.
"He is as low as a man can be and live," broke in the doctor gruffly, as he fixed Jones with a glance of angry reproach, beneath which even that rough companion quailed.
"He sent aboard yesterday begging a can of beer," blurted he, his brown face reddening a little.